Animal health company Merial has bought Genostar’s IOGMA 3.4 Metabolic Pathway Builder software to mine and analyse its biological data.
Genostar's IOGMA(R) 3.4 Metabolic Pathway Builder is a new package that integrates three modules of the company's bioinformatics products - GenoAnnot, ProteoAnnot, and PathwayExplorer. The package offers a number of different tools used to analyse high throughput bacterial genome, protein, and metabolism data. It is designed to reduce laboratory costs and accelerate discovery results.
Another key benefit of the package consists of Genostar's microB, a managed database of more than 450 microbial organisms, sourced and then standardised from many commonly used but very differently organised reference databases around the world. MicroB's coordinated data will help Merial access large amounts of cross-linked genome, protein, and metabolic data fast and efficiently. This is a significant step forward for researchers looking to access and use data easily.
‘With IOGMA 3.4 Metabolic Pathway Builder in our labs, our research teams now have access to improved tools and data that allow us to increase our productivity in our innovative research programs,’ said Dr Jean-Christophe Audonnet, senior director of discovery research, vaccinomics and recombinant vaccines at Merial.
Designed to analyse various microorganism strains, IOGMA 3.4 enables biologists to investigate, for example, virulent, disease-causing pathogens. This type of research could potentially lead to strategies to prevent catastrophic diseases due to viruses, bacteria or parasites in domestic or wild animals.
New capabilities that come with IOGMA 3.4 Metabolic Pathway Builder bioinformatics software include a client-server version that allows collaborative life sciences teams to carry out research on the same, shared data and an enhancement of the software tools with the integration of MUMmer, a commonly used open-source bioinformatics analysis tool. This capability permits researchers to compare genomes of different species or strains of micro-organisms.
